news archive
Sharp
Announces Two Reference Designs for Portable Media Players
Camas,
Washington, July 28 - Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas
announced today two new reference designs to address the
growing category of portable multimedia applications,
including hand-held video players, digital photo albums,
audio jukeboxes, and multimedia toys. These ready-to-use
reference designs provide complete hardware and software
solutions enabling easy product differentiation, rapid time
to market, and lower system costs.
Sharp's QCIF+ Portable Media
Player Reference Design Kit
(Photo: Sharp)
Portable
media players are part of a new generation of devices that
enable consumers to manage audio, image, and video files in
a single, hand-held platform. According to a recent report,
In-Stat MDR forecasts that over 100 million MPEG-4 ICs for
mobile applications will ship in 2007. To meet this market
demand, developers will need lower cost and higher quality
solutions than are currently available. The two new
media--player reference designs are intended to answer this
need.
"By
delivering a small-form-factor, cost-effective QCIF+
reference design, Sharp is enabling our customers to tap
into a huge potential market for lower-cost portable media
players," said Christophe Chene, Senior Director of IC
Marketing for Sharp Microelectronics. "Our highly
integrated QVGA reference design utilizes Sharp's
latest-generation display technology to provide a
higher-quality and a more cost-effective solution for
current-generation QVGA portable media players."
The Sharp
LH7A404 ARM9 System on Chip (SoC) is a key component in both
reference designs. In a single package it provides all the
major interfaces needed for hand-held portable media players
(including an interface to Sharp's latest-generation LCD
panels),. AC97 audio, CompactFlash, MMC/SD, USB, NAND Flash,
and SDRAM support, and sufficient performance to decode
compressed video and audio.
Both
reference designs also utilize a Sharp LCD. The QVGA
reference design leverages a unique 3.6-inch landscape
amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFT-LCD (LQ036Q1DA01) specifically
developed for portable media applications. The QCIF+
reference design utilizes a 2.2-inch a-Si TFT-LCD
(LQ022B8UB04) also developed for mobile applications. Both
panels provide excellent color saturation and low power
consumption with LED backlighting.
Sharp's
Mobile LCD engineering has anticipated the need for unique
displays suitable for the requirements of the PMP market and
has responded with exciting new technology and landscape LCD
products that are optimized for media content, said Joel
Pollack, Vice President of the Display Business Unit at
Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas.
Sharp will
begin shipping the QCIF+ reference design to customers
starting in August 2004, and the QVGA reference design in
September 2004
Information:
Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas. Tel: (800) 642-0261,
www.sharpmcu.com/pmp.
Mobile
Phone Sales Rebound
El Segundo,
California, July 27 - Robust shipments of mobile phones in
the first half of 2004 indicate the market will enjoy
stronger-than-expected growth this year, according to the
latest research results reported by iSuppli Corp.
Mobile phone shipments in 2003
and 2004.
(Source: iSuppli, July 2004.)
Worldwide
mobile phone shipments grew to 155 million units in the
second quarter, up 1.6 percent from 152.5 million units in
the first quarter, which was unseasonably strong this year.
Mobile-phone shipments totaled 307.5 million units for the
first half of the year. With no signs of mobile-phone demand
weakening, iSuppli said it expects the second half of the
year to be even stronger than the first, following normal
seasonal patterns. In light of this outlook, iSuppli is
revising its 2004 mobile phone forecast to 625 million
units, up from 600 million previously. iSuppli estimates
that 520.8 million mobile phones were shipped in 2003.
As in 2003,
mobile phone demand in 2004 is being driven by upgrade
sales, rather than by purchases made by new users. iSuppli
predicts that 73 percent of worldwide mobile phone sales in
2004 will be upgrades. Upgrades will represent an expanding
portion of total shipments, and are expected to account for
90 percent of the market by 2008.
Most users
are upgrading to so-called "feature phones," which
are becoming more affordable for consumers. Such phones
typically incorporate digital cameras and color displays.
Camera phones now represent more than one quarter of all
handsets being shipped, iSuppli estimates. Even Nokia, a
latecomer to the camera phone segment, says that 20 percent
of the handsets it is now shipping have cameras.
Another
factor driving upgrade sales is the increasing acceptance of
Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA). WCDMA is a
3G phone standard that delivers faster data speeds than
conventional CDMA can. Factors promoting rising consumer
acceptance of WCDMA include aggressive network deployments
by service providers and the increasing availability of
affordable WCDMA handsets. In the second quarter, mobile
phone manufacturers reported increased WCDMA handset
shipments, and Qualcomm reported a rise in WCDMA royalties.
WCDMA handsets should continue to claim a larger percentage
of total handset sales this year, with shipments growing by
more than 300 percent compared to 2003.
The increased
shipments of mobile phones have boosted demand for mobile
displays, but the trends in the mobile display market will
differ by technology. The monochrome STN display market will
decline between now and the end of 2006. The color STN
market will grow at a brisk pace for two or three years, and
will then be supplanted by active-matrix TFT-LCDs. Color
cell phones based on color STN technology experienced a good
quarter in Q1, mainly because their pricing is leading to
the availability of color cell phones at affordable prices.
Information:
Jonathan Cassell, iSuppli Corp. Tel: (408) 654-1714, www.isuppli.com.
AIXTRON
Joins New Belarus-German Solid-State Lighting Project
Aachen,
Germany/Minsk, Belarus, July 12 - AIXTRON today announced
its participation in a new project targeting the improvement
of light-emitting-diode (LED) technology for solid-state
lighting. The three-year project will be conducted by the
Laboratory of Semiconductor Optics, Stepanov Institute of
Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, and is
funded by the International Science & Technology Center
(ISTC) in Russia. AIXTRON will also be cooperating with the
Aachen University of Technology.
The target of
this new project is to improve LED performance and explore
silicon as a low-cost alternative for LED substrates.
Conventionally, more expensive sapphire or silicon carbide
substrates are used. Using silicon would allow a drastic
reduction in LED costs, which is a precondition for the
introduction of LEDs in general lighting applications.
Solid state
lighting (SSL) based on LED technology can save a
significant amount of energy when used to replace
conventional incandescent lamps. Furthermore, its extremely
long lifetime makes replacement of lamps nearly obsolete.
Starting an LED project in Belarus is an important milestone
in establishing this promising new technology in the region.
"We are
delighted to participate in this interesting and challenging
research project and looking very much forward to a good
cooperation with our colleagues from the Laboratory of
Semiconductor Optics of the Stepanov Institute in Belarus
and the ITHE of the RWTH Aachen," said Michael Heuken,
AIXTRON's Vice President of Corporate Research &
Development. "We are convinced that this project will
push the LED technology in Belarus forward."
AIXTRON is,
according to a independent market research institute, the
world's leading supplier of equipment for semiconductor
epitaxy.
Information: www.aixtron.com.
